


After

by narquoise



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bit sad, F/M, sort of regretsy, usual fan fic fare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:56:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1403911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narquoise/pseuds/narquoise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tiny follow-up to 'A Brief Analysis of Auden's 'Funeral Blues''.</p><p>A project Sherlock had been working on throughout his relationship with Molly becomes a memorial of their shared lives and a source of solace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

**Author's Note:**

> An attempt to start writing again after so long. It was only meant to be a writing exercise and unintentionally became a tiny epilogue of sorts.
> 
> Comments on the form and content are much appreciated. :)

He had in front of him all the photographs that he had of Molly that he’d hidden away in an album he’d placed her Auden collection next to; all as candid, beautiful, and spontaneous as she had been. These were the times he enjoyed the most; where her candidness, dry wit, and the way that she was always able to bring something interesting into the relationship despite his colder, intellectual side, came out in such perfect visual harmony that he wished could be immortalised in one precise moment he could dissect and study and abstract, just as he did most other things in his life. As a result, he turned to the thievery of memory. He stole photographs and videos of every moment he could get when she was most distracted with something like a dog or the weather or a child laughing and playing. This was the closest he could get to studying her. However, the brown of her hair and eyes, and the muscles in her face causing this dimple or that, or the upward pull of her lips proved the impossibility of that endeavour. He could not study the love he had for every single part, and all, of her. Love was, by itself, too complicated a terrain to enter. It was once something to be avoided as much as possible; now, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Just when he thought he understood what it was, it slipped through his fingers twice, thrice, four times over. It was the most painful challenge; she was his most painful reward.

 

She smiled a smile that neither judged, condemned, nor betrayed any ulterior motive or smugness. Usually, it would have meant cause for worry, but he knew her for so many years—years enough to observe how she went about her daily life, and how she was somehow able to insinuate him in her life despite his being what he normally was. Those smiles weren’t for _Sherlock Holmes: World-famous (and Only) Consulting Detective_ ; they were for _him_. For a man with, contrary to what he had wanted to prove all his life, a heart. They were gifts that she could always afford to give him even through the anger, frustration, heartbreak, confusion, fatigue, dissatisfaction, and disappointment, amongst other things.

 

As a child, he had always been told to appreciate what he had been given. He always realised it too late. As if to make up for it, the book was his photographic ledger, where he took stock of most of the gifts she had given him, and reminded him to thank her every now and then. Perhaps she had wondered, at some point in the course of their relationship, what had caused this change in the man, but of course he was not one to divulge. She had no idea he kept it, much less where he kept it, perceptive as she was. He had taken precautions in order for her not to find it, and even went so far as to hide it in his brother’s office one day whilst they was doing a thorough cleaning of the flat. To make sure that the environment was as safe and clean as possible. She never really explained why out loud, but he knew just what she meant. After all, she always went on about children and how they seemed to brighten everyone’s lives. At one point, he thought she was hearing things, id est the little patter of feet on the wooden floors. Once upon too late of a time, however, he started to hear them too.

 

He bit back something. He didn’t want to specify what it was to himself.

 

Then he started to flip through the pages as if observing paintings. This was merely a physical manifestation of the curation he had built in his mind in the room he’d dedicated to her. Each piece had specific information about the picture just near it: date taken, event, what she was doing, what she was wearing, why she was smiling. Just above him was a loft, and there she resided, looking down at him with the most welcoming smile as if waiting for him to come up and keep her company. Sometimes he visits her. 

 

Sometimes.

When it isn’t excruciating.

When he feels alone.

When he _is_. 

 

“It’s been two years.”

“That’s a little long.”

“I know.”

“Couldn’t you change the gallery?”

“Nonsense. There’s no point. The decomposition—”

“The _exhuming_ , too.”

“Precisely.” He laughs. Frankly, one of the first few laughs he’s managed in a while. That was the beauty of the human mind, he supposed. “Too tedious. The _smell_.”

“I smell _brilliant_. Take a sniff.”

Surprising how the scent of her favourite perfume mingled with her sweat still stood out so sharply, and yet so distantly, in his mind.

“ _All right_. You do.”

“I win.”

“You do.”

“Are you all right?”

 

He leaves before he makes time to answer.


End file.
